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With Company Communities, businesses will be able to deliver a custom intranet that connects employees in real-time to the content, people and apps they need to be successful anywhere, from any device

Company Communities will enable companies to create an engaging intranet experience that employees love, personalized to make accessing information and completing tasks as quick and easy as it is in their personal lives

Leading customer companies such as Brown-Forman, Burberry and Virgin America have built Company Communities to connect with their employees in entirely new ways

SAN FRANCISCO—May 30, 2013—Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the world’s #1 CRM platform, today introduced Salesforce Company Communities, reinventing the intranet for the social and mobile world. With Company Communities, businesses will be able to deliver a custom intranet that connects employees to the content, people and apps they need to be successful anywhere, from any device. Company Communities will enable companies to create an engaging intranet experience that employees love, personalized to make accessing information and completing tasks as quick and easy as it is in their personal lives. Leading customer companies such as Brown-Forman, Burberry and Virgin America have built Company Communities to connect with their employees in entirely new mobile ways.

Comments on the News
• “Companies are spending $2 billion each year on underwhelming intranet websites that most employees just do not use,” said Mike Rosenbaum, EVP of Salesforce Platform, salesforce.com. “With Salesforce Company Communities, companies can create social and mobile intranets that connect employees to the critical information, people and apps they need to be successful from anywhere.”
• “At Virgin America, our culture defines our business, and is strengthened each and every day by connecting our largely mobile workforce through Salesforce Company Communities,” said Frances Fiorillo, SVP of People and InFlight Services, Virgin America. “More than 90 percent of our team never sit at a desk or use a PC, making our Company Community the primary resource our teams rely upon to collaborate in real-time and deliver amazing, unique experiences for our guests.”
• “With more than 3,000 employees in more than 135 countries, keeping our employees connected, informed and aligned—all in real-time—is critical to delivering customer satisfaction,” said Jennifer McClinton, Director of Technology Development, Brown-Forman. “With Salesforce Company Communities, employees can personalize their intranet experience, and automatically discover and share information around the latest product and promotion updates. And, it’s easy to access from any device, so our teams can stay connected wherever they are and focus on building strong relationships with our customers.”
• “Among the many Gartner clients building or renewing their intranets, nearly all seek to add some kind of social capability. Many are finding that social methods and technologies—ranging from expertise networks, to activity streams, to wikis and blogs—are effective ways to engage users and ensure success for a wide range of knowledge management and collaboration initiatives, where traditionally top-down-oriented portal approaches have failed or grown stagnant.” – Gartner, Inc., “Predicts 2013: Portals and Web Technologies,” November 29, 2012

New Company Communities: Reinventing the Intranet for the Social and Mobile World
Today, employees expect real-time access to the information and people they need to be as efficient and productive at work as they are in their personal lives. As consumers, they can hail a cab, access a restaurant menu to order dinner, or tap their personal network for a vacation recommendation—instantly and on any device. But legacy intranets have failed to deliver similar levels of access or engagement employees demand to complete business tasks anytime and anywhere—from approving time-off requests and accessing the latest travel policies to identifying the right expert within the company.

Companies invest more than $2 billion every year maintaining intranets that were created more than a decade ago. Built using legacy infrastructure, they connect employees to static files that are hard to update, complex employee directories that have no contextual background, and content that is irrelevant to their role. Optimized for desktops, these intranets are not designed for today’s real-time business environment, where employees need instant access to company information and people to be successful anywhere, from any device.

Connecting Employees in Real-Time to the Content, People and Apps They Need to be Successful
With Company Communities, businesses will be able to create a completely custom, branded community that delivers access to the content, people and apps that make employees productive anywhere. Employees will be able to:

• Publish: Publish, review, update and approve content, and even target specific information to colleagues based on roles and profiles. Now the compliance department will be able to distribute the latest travel guidelines, the HR team can flag changes to employee benefits, and IT can roll out new policies—all in real-time.
• Find and engage experts: Rich social profiles for every employee will track their influence and expertise automatically. In addition, employees will be able to collaborate directly with experts or groups through the Salesforce Chatter feed within Company Communities. Now any employee will be able to find a legal expert to answer a question, discover the best people to attend a cross functional meeting, or quickly get answers to questions, whether they be on IT troubleshooting or stock options.
• Share and collaborate on files: Employees will be able to access, post, share and get feedback on the latest files and knowledge articles to ensure that teams are accessing the most up-to-date information. Now HR can gather feedback via polls on proposed new policies, a sales person can get advice on the best way to deliver a presentation and the facilities organization can survey employees about their latest needs.
• Access apps: Company Communities will provide a single, trusted place for employees to access all the apps they need to be productive, including Salesforce apps and third party apps. Employees will be able to make the most of those valuable spare minutes when they are in a taxi or in line at the airport to approve vacation requests, access annual training or certification courses, or fill out a new hire wizard.

Customer Companies Connect Employees to Critical Information in Entirely New Ways
Leading customer companies such as Brown-Forman, Burberry and Virgin America have built Company Communities to connect with their employees in entirely new ways. For Virgin America, working in real-time means delivering an on-time, differentiated service. Virgin America leverages Company Communities to deliver all of their critical business information, team updates and team performance statistics to their mobile teammates in an easy to use app. And Brown-Forman, one of the largest American-owned producers of spirits and wine, built “My B-F,” a customized intranet where every employee can access everything from targeted company announcements to more than 30 custom apps built on the Salesforce Platform.

Pricing & Availability
• Salesforce Company Communities is currently scheduled to be generally available in the second half of 2013. Pricing for Salesforce Company Communities will be announced at general availability.

Salesforce, the global CRM leader, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit https://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.